– the ramblings of a fettered mind

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I have had my blog for over three years and have posted iregularly whenever I was inspired by something I’ve read, seen, heard, or thought but taking on the A to Z April Challenge meant writing 26 posts in one month.

The concensous is that writers write everyday and don’t wait for inspiration

When I decide to try something I do it wholeheartedly and for me and the A to Z April Challenge that meant that I approached each post as stream of consciousness, with little or no preparation apart from a list of A-to-Z with potential topics. I know that some people have prepared their posts in the weeks before April and although I admit that I may have finished on time if I had taken this approach I am unsure if I agree with it.

I tried to write each post in one session, dropping my thoughts almost unedited from my heart/mind and on to the page/screen.

This doesn’t mean that I was flippant in my writing but it did teach me to edit once and then let it go. I did fix typos in the minutes and hours after each post.

The Stats for April:

WordPress – Freshly Pressed

Although I’m tempted to claim the highlight of the month was having my “B” post promoted on the WordPress Freshly Pressed page but it has actually been the amazing blogs that I’ve discovered and the wonderful and inspring comments I’ve received, especially when posts have been re-blogged.

Thanks to everyone at A to Z Challenge, to all my followers, and the the blogs I now follow and am regularly inspried by.

Haruki Murakami’s epic novel 1Q84 was an instant success in Japan and soon its publishers were in a mad rush to get the work published for the english language market.

Oddly mirroring the plot line in the novel where one of main characters ghost rewrites a story, the publishers of 1Q84 were in such a hurry to get it to market that they enlisted the services of two different writers to translate the work; one for books I and II, and another for book III.

Set it Japan in 1984 the story revolves around two central characters:

Aomame (written with the same characters as the word for “green peas” and pronounced Ah-oh-mah-meh); a female fitness instructor and part-time assassin

and Tengo, an aspiring novelist and part time editor and maths lecturer

The point of view alternates each chapter with Aomame and Tengo and the reader slowly learns their connection. Murakami enjoys playing with the time period too and takes his time explaining iconic objects of the time.

1Q84 features an immaculate conception, telekinesis, transmigrating souls and a talking crow. But the more blatant oddness of Murakami’s plots tends to distract us from their roots in emotions that are just as unaccountable. A virtue of his writing is that, carried away, you rarely sense the strain. – Anthony Cummins The Telegraph UK

Knopf / Getty Images

The title 1Q84 has its roots in a few different places; it is set in 1984, there is of course George Orwell’s novel 1984, and in the story Aomame coins the term for the odd version of the world she finds herself in; it is 1984 but also no longer the same. The name of the letter Q is also the same sound in Japanese as the number nine “Kyu”. And the complexity of this too mirrors that of the storyline in many ways.

…Yes, this is a Haruki Murakami novel, where magical and dreamlike phenomena are deadpanned into existence with the same calm craft that his characters routinely employ in cooking themselves delicious-sounding Japanese meals. – Stephen Poole, The Guardian UK

Murakami has a knack for oddball twists (talking cats, raining fish) and in 1Q84 this continues with terrifying “little people” emerging from the mouths of goats and people and a moss coloured second moon hanging in the sky.

Having Tengo and his editor and co-conspirator discuss the writing and editing process delivers some classic writing advice:

“When you introduce things that readers have never seen before into a piece of fiction, you have to describe them with as much precision and in as much detail as possible. What you eliminate from fiction is the description of things that most readers have seen.”

and on story development:

“Once a gun appears in a story, it will be shot and someone will die”.

1Q84 is a masterpiece but I am left a little frustrated at having to read the translated story rather than Murakami’s original Japanese work.

His most recent release is the solo album “Everything is true“, on which he played every instrument and provided all the vocals.

“Dempsey is a gifted observer of the human condition…a truly beautiful collection.” – The Daly Telegraph

Dempsey’s songwriting is superb and unique, it stands apart in an industry full of three-minute lust songs.

“The tally for genius lyrics per second is positively baffling…eleven excellent reasons to acquaint yourself with one of Australia’s finest songwriters.” – Beat said of his latest solo effort

Dempsey is a veracious reader too and the breadth of his literary consumption appears to feed his songwriting; everything from literary classics, 1960’s Sci-Fi from Philip K Dick, to A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin, and The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene.

When asked once about the breadth of subjects in his songs he said that he actively avoids writing love songs, that the genre has been done to death so why put just another love song out there. There are so many more interesting things to write about.

Augie March’s song Farmer’s Son came up on shuffle on my iPhone today and was reminded how cleverly they infuse their lyrics with voice. Even some of the words they use, there are so few used in a song they all have to be good, e.g. Shirk. It is one of the singles taken from their Watch me disappear album.

Currently reading…

The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan
2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson
1Q84 by Murakami
the boat by nam le
Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson
Wanting by Richard Flanagan
The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil